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Finally completed McMurrough from my previous post on Painting Plaid! In every painters queue there’s one project (or a dozen in my case) that never seems to get finished. Well this pooch has been squatting in my painting docket for a couple years and it feels good to wrap it up. I was intimidated by the plaid and a bit uninspired for a good color layout that would fit with the rest of my army. Finally, I just gave my self a deadline which I missed by a few days anyway. 😛 Sometimes you have to stop over-analyzing and force yourself to finish. Are there a few things that I might have done differently? Sure, but who cares! So without further delay here he is.

McMurrough is a Dog-Warrior of Fortune, the fiercest private contractor you will find in the mercenary market. Now he is trapped in his Dog-Warrior shape, unable to return to his Dogface form, and carries an illegal Templar sword, a smart weapon with a built-in AI. How did McMurrough end up in this situation and what does the Hassassin Society have to do with it? This is something you will find in the upcoming Infinity Campaign Book!

If you’d like to learn about McMurrough’s story, click here. Thanks for reading and as always happy painting!

I’ve always enjoyed teaching and motivating others to improve their skills. If you’re any good at anything, don’t be greedy with that knowledge. I say share it with the world and you’ll be better for it! So, this year I started teaching private paint lessons to fellow hobbyists in my local gaming club. It’s been a great experience and I hope my Padawans have gained as much from it as I have.

Recently, one of my students started work on a sci-fi, Caledonian-themed army for Infinity by Corvus Belli. The most challenging technique in this project is the heavy use of tartan patterns. So in this post I thought I’d share with you a simple way of creating a tartan pattern for your kilt wearing, bad ass Scotsmen. Here we go! 🙂

FYI, the CaledonianConfederacy were a group of indigenous peoples of what is now Scotland during the Iron Age and Roman eras. Thanks Wikipedia!

As with most paint projects, it pays to start off with some sort of plan. I created the graphic above to illustrate what a plaid looks like close up. A few things you’ll notice is that there’s a primary color in the background (in this case medium blue) and three secondary colors (navy, orange and white). There are only a few places where colors intersect to give you a 100% saturation the rest are 50/50. Keep in mind that Tartans come in all sorts of patterns and color combos, but for simplicity’s sake and clarity on the tabletop, this is as complicated as I recommend taking the design. Now that I have a plan, lets get to painting!

For this tutorial we’re using another model from the Infinity line, McMurrough! Yessiree, it’s everyone’s favorite, chain rifle-toting, furry, friend! Start off by base-coating the kilt with Marine Teal then shading it with Deep Ocean and finally highlight with Surf Aqua. The transitions don’t need to be perfectly blended because most of it will be covered up by the rest of the pattern.

Next, using the #1 brush lay out a navy grid using Blue Liner. In this case each stripe in the grid is about two brush-widths thick and four brush-widths apart but you’ll have to adjust your design on smaller models. Fabric can be tricky to paint so use references of striped and plaid skirts to better understand how the pattern should flow on the garment. For example, on McMurrough’s kilt I tapered the stripes and their spacing towards his waistline where the fabric cinches under the belt.

Other tips to keep in mind:

• Keep your paint watered down (especially when using the Liners)

• Relax and take your time creating the grid

• Be neat and make sure to have plenty of lighting

• If you make a mistake simply wipe it off quickly with a wet napkin and try again

Now it’s time to break up those heavy blue stripes with some orange ones. Using a 30/70 mix of Blue Liner/Fire Orange and the #1 brush, paint on the next set of stripes one brush-width thick along the center of the previous ones. Again, take your time and keep the paint watered down. It’ll take two or three light coats to get nice coverage, but it’s better than clumping on thick paint and making a mess of things.

At the intersections paint on pure orange in tiny rectangles using the #0 brush. Now this pattern is really coming together. If we wanted to, we could stop here and have a totally convincing and attractive tartan. However let’s kick it up a notch with one more pop of color. Overachiever!

To tie it all together and break up all that blue lets add some Pure White. Again using the #0 brush, apply watered down paint between the other stripes. Oh boy that’s looking slick as ice.

Following that, add some pure white straight out of the bottle to the intersections. And there you have it folks! A lovely tartan to make the most grizzled Scotsman smile. 😀 Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish giving McMurrough a proper paint job. Check back next week for pictures of the final product! Thanks for reading and as always, if you enjoyed this post please share it or post a comment!

FYI: I used Reaper Master Series Paints in this tutorial, however these techniques can be used with any paint line. The one thing I have to recommend however are the Reaper MSP Liners. I use them for freehand, line shading, washes and occasionally base-coating. They’re fantastic and a staple to my painting diet. Take a look at some of the items I suggested below via my Amazon Affiliate links. You pay nothing extra and Amazon kicks back a little something for me. Win win!

My longtime friend, Richie, commissioned me to work on a stylized portrait of his beautiful French bulldog Oreo. Oreo was diagnosed with cancer a couple years ago, and despite rather bleak predictions he’s still with us (thanks to some great doctors and Richie’s bank account). I love animals and have dealt with my fair share of sick pets in the past so this project seriously hits me in the feels. And so, with out further dejection lets move on to the fun stuff! 😊

The portrait is based off a Pop! French Bulldog by Funko shown below. Painting vinyl figures are always a fun change of pace from my usual tabletop miniatures. Their usually simple design and large smooth areas are great for stylized paint jobs and freehand.

Original Funko paint job.

Original Funko paint job.

The first step was to clean and prime the figure. You can’t really see it in these photos but there were a few air bubbles in the vinyl that I had to cut out and patch up using some putty. Also the original factory paint had a visible raised edge to it so I smoothed those down with some sandpaper. Nice, clean and ready for some freehand!

Oreo Prime

Using the original paintjob as a guide, I started planning out Oreo’s unique facial markings. The transition from black to white on the muzzle was tricky but I think the feathering technique I used worked out pretty well as you will see in the final. I also accented the wrinkles in his face.

Basecoats

I knew that I was going to use cool, blue-gray tones for highlighting the black areas so I thought using warm ivory tones for the white shadows would contrast nicely. Then I added flesh tones to the inside of the ears again using a feathering technique for the blending.

Almost done!

Here we have the final result. As you can see it’s come a long way since the previous photos. I was in the zone so didn’t stop for more work-in-progress shots. Basically, I added the blue-gray highlights to the black and painted his eyes along with the rest of his body. After analyzing my references I also decided to narrow the white space between the ears and eyes and add more black to the inside of the ears and front of the mouth. Adorable!

Once the painting was done I sprayed the model with matte sealer, then went back with gloss varnish and coated the eyes and nose for a wet look. And of course, I signed his little hind paw. 😊

Finished!

Finished!

So there you have it folks! A fun paint project for anyone to take on. I’d like to thanks Richie for entrusting me to paint his best buddy and look forward to painting more of these in the future. Particularly for my Boston Terrier, River.

Have any questions? Feel free to ask them in the comments below. If you’d like me to paint a commission vinyl dog for you then message me through this blog as well.

Hello everybody in TV land! Over the last few months I’ve been dabbling with recording myself while painting and it hasn’t been very fun. I’ve used everything from GoPros to Powershots and from headmounts to my wife holding a camera for an hour. Now after much procrastination I’m gonna share one of my recent tests with you. I still have a long way to go but hey, maybe we can learn together! Anywhoo, check it out and please share any feedback, suggestions, ideas or requests. Enjoy! 🙂

Underground Lasers has a new terrain piece available on their website! The Generic Colonial House is a simple build with a removable door, and roof for access to the interior. The size and practical design can be used for many genres. Painting it was pretty simple too, with just enough details to keep me from feeling bored. I assembled the entire model before painting because I was too anxious to see what it looked like (curse my impatience). In hindsight, I recommend painting all the components separately and then assembling it. Using that process I can see painting several of these in a weekend. Check out the rest of their cool models at UndergroundLasers.com

Let’s keep this short and sweet. This impressive model kit is available through Underground Lasers. I painted it using a Badger Sotar 2020 airbrush and Badger Minitare Airbrush paint. Booyah and happy painting!

It’s official, I can now be labeled a “Mr. Fancy Pants”. That’s because this weekend I won The Draconic Awards, Captain Con 2015 Best of Show trophy. Booyah baby! Thanks to everyone over at Wargamers Consortium for putting this event together. Up until the last moments before the announcement I didn’t expect such a fantastic result. It was a great experience and one that I look forward to doing again.

Bad ass trophies and medals 🙂

The Draconic Awards 2015, CaptainCon Best of Show

The Draconic Awards 2015, CaptainCon Silver Coin

The Draconic Awards 2015, CaptainCon Silver Coin

Would you like to enter a painting competition? The Draconic Awards is the place to go. The organizers are super cool, talented people and provide great feedback. And furthermore, those medals and trophy are bad ass!
I had a great time at CaptainCon. The organizers were able to do a lot with the space including a demo section, tournaments, role playing games and a board game room. It was a chill convention in a nice venue and I’m really looking forward to the next time. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some painting to do.